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Forty years after Tropical Storm Agnes ravaged the Wyoming Valley, we have little about which to celebrate.

Maybe some people feel more secure with a higher dike, but the truth is and will remain that nature owns the floodplain and someday, one day, the valley again will be flooded. Heaven help those alive and living here after that event.

Luzerne County remains a fragmented collection of communities living in the past. Even worse, the county is deep in debt ($400 million is a staggering number) and stained by political corruption. Many towns and school systems are in debt (the grand total could be $1 billion or more) and the latter are showing test scores that are nothing to brag about. And somewhere out there, we think, are FBI agents continuing to probe yet-undisclosed further wrongdoings in the many communities and school districts.

There were voices of wisdom and counsel following the flood. Leaders such as Bill Wilcox, secretary of the state Department of Community Affairs; Max Rosenn, a key flood recovery committee member and a nationally respected federal appeals court judge, and a few others of that caliber said that we should take advantage of the post-flood togetherness and really come together.

Wilcox advised that it was unwise to rebuild in the floodplain. Rosenn and some academic and religious leaders recommended that valley communities merge, thereby creating a dynamic city that could arise like a phoenix to lofty stature.

No one listened, and the emphasis is on no one. As a reporter who covered the dramatic events of June 23, 1972, and the two years of heartache and struggle thereafter, I can attest that few folks took any visionary view of who we were, what had happened to us, how a common history had melded us together and how we might emerge as a 21st-century bastion of economic prosperity in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

An aging U.S. Rep. Dan Flood was in his final decade of service but he still had the clout and the willpower to bring in the federal dollars, and that he did. Ah, yes, that wonderful canopy on Public Square and South Main Street â¦ the symbol of just about what we can sum up as the "recovery" of Wyoming Valley from the anger of Agnes. We built buildings and bridges and we got those $3,000 checks into the hands of flood victims who promptly scurried to the Wyoming Valley Mall to buy the underwear and socks that they needed to replace the muddy remnants of the flood.

Meanwhile, the downtowns of the Plymouths and Shickshinnies, in the flood, and the Nanticokes and Ashleys, outside the flood zone, withered and continue to die a slow death. Goodbye, Bartuska's Furniture.

The Back Mountain and Mountain Top have blossomed as the bedroom communities of choice. Wilkes-Barreans are meeting to try to build bridges between ethnic and racial groups that, one wonders, could even band together, neighbor helping neighbor, if the Susquehanna River crept up Northampton Street again.

It is a sign of our economic hard times that the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry is down to a staff that can be counted on one hand. But don't blame the chamber for our 40-year run of arrogance, parochialism and corruption. A broad vision was encouraged by members and leaders there over the years, but again we lacked the political willpower in our county and communities. Worst of all, apathetic citizens remained secluded in their homes and hometowns, comfortable with the status quo until it intruded on their cloistered lives. Ah, the wails we heard when the local parish church was closed.

Our heads have been kept above water (no pun intended) by our assets, some God-given: Water availability, a pleasant four-season environment, solid colleges and universities, good highways, post-anthracite industrial diversification and, most importantly, a hard-working, ethnically diverse people who give the heart to the Valley With a Heart. Drug-driven crime has caused some blips on the heart meter, but most folks still care about family, friends and neighbors.

Why, oh why, have we allowed artificial boundaries to hold our one village down?

Paul Golias, retired managing editor of The Citizens' Voice, writes a weekly column on regional issues. He can be contacted at pgolias@ptd.net.

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